Simon MacCulloch

She

The people I know are an indistinct flow
The people I knew are a blur
No lover or wife in the drift of my life
No thoughts of such friends as there were.
But she, whether blessing or bane
Yes she, only she, will remain.

She took me to heart at the innocent start
She’ll take me again at the finish
No question of why, just a smile or a sigh
A memory no time can diminish.
She’s gone but she’s here all the same
Forever asserting her claim.

I don’t really care for the foul and the fair
The judgements of truth and of beauty
The rankings of love, the below, the above
The endless directions of duty.
For hers is an absolute essence
Whose value is simply its presence.

Return to your god or revert to the sod
Such outcomes are equally empty
Whatever damnation, whatever salvation
Her ownership serves to exempt me.
Wherever we go when we die
She’s there, so of course so am I.

The dancer’s the dance, the entrancer the trance
And all is as real as it seems
Her being’s persistence defines my existence
My life is the stuff of her dreams.
I ask for no more and no less
And she, only she, can say yes.

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of journals including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Spectral Realms, Altered Reality, Aphelion and others.